Adventures in Teaching Kids How to Code

RSS

Month: December 2012

We’re having our first ever hackday today, here is the brief we are giving participants.

BRIEF

What are we making?

The aim of this hack is create projects that 9-11 year old can make in Code Club. It’s the kind of project they will do in teams of 2/3 with one Raspberry Pi per team once a week for 3 weeks (3 hours to complete)

Things to consider

Code Club projects are creative fun so avoid boring stuff like ‘maths games’ they get enough of that crap in their regular classes. It needs to be a solid project but leave room for creativity.

They need to be able to either find the parts for their project either around the school building or they need to be cheap and portable enough to buy off the internet with a bit of fund raising. (Under £75)

There Raspberry Pis already have Scratch on the SD card so bear that in mind when you start. Consider if using other languages that the children will have to learn them from the beginning as Code Club member have only used Scratch so far.

How can the project be tied into what happens in school life. Eg data from a geography school trip, sports day, lunch times or games played at break etc. But equally can the project just be made at any time.

Do they need sensors? Light, heat, movement or? If so we really hope you’ve bought them with you.